The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are Centrally Funded Business Schools for management offering undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and executive programmes along with some additional courses in the field of business administration. The establishment of IIMs was initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, based on the recommendation of the Planning Commission of India.
IIMs were declared institutions of national importance by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) after the passage of Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017. By this act, IIMs were given more autonomy in handling their day-to-day operations. The act changed the IIM governing body from the IIM council to an IIM coordination forum. IIMs were granted much leeway to decide their courses, fees and other related matters. Top IIMs — such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Lucknow — have featured in top 100 global b-schools by FT MBA Ranking, as well as achieved top 10 rankings among management schools in India, according to the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) used by the HRD minister of India.
The full time Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes, are the flagship programs across all IIMs. The full time MBA degree is offered as a two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) or the one-year global MBA (EPGP, PGPX, MBAEx, PGPEX-VLM, PGP-BL & IPMX). Eight leading IIMs — IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Indore, IIM Mumbai, IIM Shillong, IIM Lucknow, and IIM Kozhikode — offer the one year MBA as a full-time programme that follows the global MBA norms. Some IIMs also offer a two-year part time (executive) MBA for graduates with more work experience.
IIMs only offered diplomas at the end of the full time programmes However, since the passage of IIM Act 2017, all IIMs have started offering Master of Business Administration (MBA). Some IIMs offer the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM), a doctoral programme. The fellowship is considered to be equivalent to a DBA globally. Most IIMs also offer short-term Executive MBA courses and part-time programmes. Some IIMs also offer unique programs, like IIM Bodh Gaya, IIM Rohtak, IIM Ranchi and IIM Indore's Five Year Integrated Programme in Management and IIM Lucknow's Working Managers' Programme of two years. IIM Rohtak is the only IIM which offers a Five Year Integrated Program in Law (BBA+LLB). The IIM's are some of the most competitive business schools in the world to get accepted into, with an acceptance rate of around 3%.
Institutes
+ Photo Established Institute Abbreviation Location State/UT NIRF Ranking 2025 Website Notes 1961 IIM Calcutta IIM-C Kolkata West Bengal7https://www.iimcal.ac.in 1961 IIM Ahmedabad IIM-A Ahmedabad Gujarat1https://www.iima.ac.in 1973 IIM Bangalore IIM-B Bengaluru Karnataka 2https://www.iimb.ac.in 1984 IIM Lucknow IIM-L Lucknow Uttar Pradesh5https://www.iiml.ac.in 1996 IIM Indore IIM-I Indore Madhya Pradesh8https://www.iimidr.ac.in 1996 IIM Kozhikode IIM-K Kozhikode Kerala3https://www.iimk.ac.in 2007 IIM Shillong IIM-S Shillong Meghalaya38https://www.iimshillong.ac.in 2010 IIM Raipur IIM-Raipur Raipur Chhattisgarh15https://www.iimraipur.ac.in 2010 IIM Ranchi IIM-Ranchi Ranchi Jharkhand18https://www.iimranchi.ac.in 2010 IIM Rohtak IIM-Rohtak Rohtak Haryana19https://www.iimrohtak.ac.in 2011 IIM Kashipur IIM-Kashipur Kashipur Uttarakhand23https://www.iimkashipur.ac.in 2011 IIM Tiruchirappalli IIM-T Tiruchirappalli Tamil Nadu16https://www.iimtrichy.ac.in 2011 IIM Udaipur IIM-U Udaipur Rajasthan21https://iimu.ac.in/ 2015 IIM Amritsar IIM Amritsar Amritsar Punjab64https://www.iimamritsar.ac.in 2015 IIM Bodh Gaya IIM-BG Bodh Gaya Bihar 31https://www.iimbg.ac.in 2015 IIM NagpurIIM-NNagpur Maharashtra25https://www.iimnagpur.ac.in 2015 IIM Sambalpur IIM Sambalpur Sambalpur Odisha34https://www.iimsambalpur.ac.in 2015 IIM Sirmaur IIM Sirmaur Sirmaur district Himachal Pradesh51http://www.iimsirmaur.ac.in 2015 IIM Visakhapatnam IIM-V Visakhapatnam Andhra Pradesh 29https://www.iimv.ac.in 2016 IIM Jammu IIM-J Jammu Jammu and Kashmir35https://www.iimj.ac.in 1963 (converted to IIM in 2023)IIM MumbaiIIM-MMumbaiMaharashtra6http://www.iimmumbai.ac.in2025IIM GuwahatiIIM-GGuwahatiAssam
History After India became independent in 1947, the Planning Commission was entrusted to oversee and direct the development of the nation. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number of public sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins of UCLA to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, named Indian Institutes of Management. Calcutta and Ahmedabad were chosen as the locations for the two new institutes.
The institute at Calcutta was established first, on 13 November 1961, and was named Indian Institute of Management Calcutta or IIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation, and Indian industry. The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad.
In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai took note of the success of the two established IIMs and recommended the setting up of two more IIMs. Based on the committee's recommendation, a new IIM, originally intended to cater exclusively to the needs of public sector enterprises, was established in Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) the next year. In 1981, the first IIM Review Committee was convened to examine the progress of the three existing IIMs and to make recommendations. The committee noted that the three IIMs were producing around 400 PGP graduates every year and that they had reached their optimum capacity. It proposed the opening of two more IIMs to meet the rising demand for management professionals. It also recommended expanding the Fellowship programmes, similar to PhD programmes, to meet the growing demand for faculty in management schools in India. The fourth IIM, IIM Lucknow, was established in 1984 based on the committee's recommendation.
Two more IIMs, the fifth and sixth, were established at Kozhikode and Indore in 1996. IIM Shillong was the seventh IIM to be established, following a 2005 decision by the Government of India; its foundation stone was laid on 1 December 2007; and its first academic session was 2008–09. Since 2007, fourteen new IIMs have been set up, bringing the total number of IIMs to 20, IIM-Jammu being the latest one, starting in 2016. In 2023, prestigious National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, was converted into an IIM, making for a total of 21 IIMs. In 2025, the twenty second IIM was established in Guwahati.
The Union Cabinet, on 24 January 2017, approved the bill that became the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017, which declares IIMs as Institutes of National Importance and enables them to grant degrees and to further make other important changes to the institute. The IIM bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 28 July 2017 and by the Rajya Sabha on 19 December 2017. After receiving presidential assent, the IIM bill became an Act on 31 December 2017.
In the 2023 Union Budget grants to the IIMs were cut in half. Heads of IIMs and B-schools said this would effect the newer IIMs disproportionately.
Academics The IIMs mainly offer undergraduate/ postgraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive education programs. Some programs offered by all IIMs are similar; however, some IIMs offer unique programs for specialized purposes.
Postgraduate Management Program
Two-year MBA (Post Graduate Program) All IIMs offer a two-year full-time Post Graduate Program in Management (PGP), equivalent to a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. The program is considered the flagship program of IIMs, and awards the Master of Business Administration (MBA) to successful candidates. Since 2018, all the IIMs have started granting MBA degrees for this flagship program.
This program is usually structured into six trimesters spread across two years, starting in June and running until April of the second year. The first-year coursework generally consists of core courses in various management disciplines, while in the second year, students are allowed to select courses from an exhaustive list of electives. The PGP is a general, fully integrated management program with no specialization, and typically includes courses in: accounting, behavioral science, finance, economics, human resource management (HRM), management sciences and information technology, marketing, business operations, business mathematics, public policy, statistics and decision analysis, strategy, and general management. The 2-year MBA programs offered by IIMs at: Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Udaipur, Lucknow and Indore are often termed as Master's in Management (MIM) internationally and are often placed around top 100 Master's in Management programs across the world since inception.
One-year full time MBA To compete on the global stage, the premier IIMs found the necessity to start MBA programs that would be ranked globally at par with the MBA programs of Harvard (Harvard Business School of Harvard University) and Wharton (The Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania). Within a decade of their inception, the one-year MBA programs have catapulted the position of the top IIMs to within the top 50 global MBA list. Since 2006, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Shillong and IIM Udaipur have started offering the one-year, full-time postgraduate programs for professionals having approximately 5 years or more of work experience, which are a unique addition to the bucket of flagship programs which adds experienced professionals who add valued experience to the system of full-time MBA.
The one-year program was necessitated because the normal 2-year program is primarily aimed at new graduates or graduates with less than 4–5 years of work experience. The 1-year programs are general, fully integrated management programs with no specialization, and typically include the same courses as offered in a typical 2-year MBA program. These intensive programs typically require 75 credits or around 750 hours of classroom teaching along with projects and other coursework as in a normal 2-year MBA program. The flagship 1-year MBA programs offered by IIMs at Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Calcutta are often termed as Global MBAs internationally and have been ranked within the top 50 Global MBA programs across the world since their inception.